Despite the long break and the inability to practice outside this winter, the men’s golf was locked in an eighth place tie with Missouri State at the Rice Intercollegiate Tournament.

With a total score of 625 strokes, Kansas is just four shots behind Big 12 rival Nebraska.

Rice sits alone at the top of the leaderboard with a two-round total of 594 strokes with one round to go. 16 teams are competing in the tournament at Westwood Golf Club in Houston, Texas.

Kansas is coming off of its most successful fall season in recent memory, which included three top-three finishes.

The bad winter weather prevented the Jayhawks from practicing as much as they would have liked leading up to the tournament.

Coach Kit Grove said he was disappointed about the team’s play in the first round.

“We threw par out of the window and we were shooting for scores around 75,” Grove said. “But we ended up with way too many scores in the 80s.”

In the second round, the Jayhawks moved from 12th to eighth place.

“If we had played as well in the morning as we did in the afternoon we’d be right where we want to be,” Grove said. “But it didn’t go that way and that’s life.”

Nate Barbee, a Dakota Dunes, S.D., junior, attributed some of the team’s poor play in the morning to the long off season.

“It’s hard to come back after such a long break,” Barabee said. “Hopefully we’ll be ready to go when March comes around.”

Though the team didn’t start off the way they wanted, Barbee shot back-to back-rounds of 76 that landed him in the top 10.

Barbee was surprised by his place individually because he said he thought he had struggled early.

“I didn’t play that great in the morning,” Barabee said. “I guess I was able to hang in there, but I never really got anything going.”

Even with the start the Jayhawks had, they are still in position to ink another top five.

“We’re going to look to move up to fifth place,” Grove said. “if we can pull it off, I’d be very pleased with that.”

Fourth-place Nebraska is four strokes ahead of Kansas. That gives the Jayhawks added incentive to move up the leaderboard.

“We see Nebraska quite a bit,” Grove said. “They got the best of us in the fall, so we’d like to get even with them.”

Barbee said he’d also like to improve individually.

“We’re wanting a top-five finish as a team and I’d like to get up in the top five individually as well,” Barbee said. “That would be a great start for us this season.”

“We definitely have the talent to do it if we can stay composed, not get angry and all shoot around 75 like Coach wants,” Bryan Hackenberg, a junior from Dakota Dunes, S.D., said. “We have a great chance to shoot up the leaderboard.”

— Edited by Michael Holtz